Tech industry

Tech industry

As Wall Street obsessed over Microsoft's Azure growth rates and OpenAI accounting, LinkedIn quietly crossed $5 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in the Redmond company's December quarter, up 11%. That puts the business social network on an annual run rate of more than $20 billion. LinkedIn is known for its recruiting tools and job postings, but given overall weakness in the job market, the latest growth is being fueled by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, its advertising business.

During the earnings call with analysts after market close on Wednesday, chairman and CEO Satya Nadella and chief financial officer Amy Hood were pressed on investor fears over a slowdown in revenue growth for the Azure platform amid soaring capital expenditures-both signs that the company is struggling to keep up with AI demand. Those two figures combined have given rise to questions about whether Microsoft can build out computing capacity as fast as planned, and if that issue will further limit Azure's growth.

One way to track the speed of the AI boom is to follow the hardware supply chain. Nvidia is the classic example: As AI companies build out data centers, they're buying up billions of dollars of GPUs each month, turning Nvidia into the most valuable company on earth. But Nvidia has suppliers too, and looking at them can give us an even longer-term view of the market.

For decades, tech companies have relied immensely on India's vast workforce, from entry-level call center jobs to software engineers and high-ranking managerial positions. But with the advent of advanced AI, which has been accompanied by employers greatly cutting back on hiring with the hopes of eventually automating tasks entirely, India's tech workers are having to cope with a vastly different reality in 2026.

The world today is witnessing the dawn of an AI-driven intelligent revolution, Eddie Wu told a developer conference in September. Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will not only amplify human intelligence but also unlock human potential, paving the way for the arrival of artificial superintelligence (ASI). ASI, Wu said, could produce a generation of super scientists' and full-stack super engineers', who would tackle unsolved scientific and engineering problems at unimaginable speeds.

Patreon's blog post announcing the change made it clear that it had no other choice. "We strongly disagree with this decision," the company wrote. "Creators need consistency and clarity in order to build healthy, long-term businesses. Instead, creators using legacy billing will now have to endure the whiplash of another policy reversal - the third such change from Apple in the past 18 months."

The Magnificent Seven have been running out of fuel well before we rang in the new year. And while the Mag Seven may have clocked in the most underwhelming first three weeks of the year in quite a while (the Mag Seven usually start new years with strength rather than weakness), I certainly wouldn't hit the panic button just yet.

Elon Musk has suggested timing a possible initial public offering of SpaceX to coincide with a planetary phenomenon and his birthday in June, the Financial Times reported. The owner of the rocket maker is considering timing the offering to coincide with when Jupiter and Venus appear very close together, the FT reported, citing five people familiar with the matter. That suggests a date in the middle of June, the same month the billionaire turns 55.

A future-proof IT infrastructure is often positioned as a universal solution that can withstand any change. However, such a solution does not exist. Nevertheless, future-proofing is an important concept for IT leaders navigating continuous technological developments and security risks, all while ensuring that daily business operations continue. The challenge is finding a balance between reactive problem solving and proactive planning, because overlooking a change can cost your organization. So, how do you successfully prepare for the future without that one-size-fits-all solution?

Altogether, Cloudflare reported in its 2025 fourth quarter analysis that it observed more than 180 internet disruptions worldwide over the course of 2025, ranging from short, localized incidents to multiday nationwide outages. The most dramatic outages involved physical infrastructure failures, especially submarine cables and national power grids. For example, in Haiti, Digicel suffered two separate international fiber cuts in October and November, pushing traffic on its network close to zero during one incident and triggering multi‑hour outages until repairs were completed.

Apple and Google have made millions of dollars from AI apps that let users undress people even as both companies claim to ban such software from their stores, according to a new study. Researchers with the nonprofit Tech Transparency Project found 55 such apps in Google's Play store and 47 in Apple's App Store. All told, those apps were downloaded 705 million times and have generated $117 million in revenue, they say.

Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk has long garnered a reputation for being massively wrong in his promises and predictions about the future. In 2024, for instance, he said that AI would become "smarter than the smartest human" by 2025. He said his company's SpaceX Starship rocket, which is still exploding during test flights, will land on Mars this year. Like clockwork, he's predicted that self-driving cars will become a reality "next year" every year for well over a decade now.

We've made significant progress in recovering our U.S. infrastructure with our U.S. data center partner. However, the U.S. user experience may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content. We're committed to bringing TikTok back to its full capacity as soon as possible. We'll continue to provide updates. Thanks for your patience.

Yahoo's big AI play is, in many ways, actually a return to the company's roots. Three decades ago, Yahoo was known as "Jerry's guide to the world wide web," and was designed as a sort of all-encompassing portal to help people find good stuff on an increasingly large, hard-to-parse internet. In the early aughts, the rise of web search more or less obviated that whole idea. But now, Yahoo thinks, we've come back around.

The markets are off to the races today as they round out trading for the first month of 2026. Technology stocks are in focus with several Mag 7 names on deck to report their quarterly earnings, including Apple ( Nasdaq: AAPL) and Meta Platforms ( Nasdaq: META), both of which are advancing by over 1% this morning. Small-cap stocks are relatively flat, with the Russell 2000 down fractionally. Meanwhile, precious metal gold has surpassed the $500/ounce threshold for the first time in history, sending mining stocks higher.

Edge computing is a type of IT infrastructure in which data is collected, stored, and processed near the "edge" or on the device itself instead of being transmitted to a centralized processor. Edge computing systems usually involve a network of devices, sensors, or machinery capable of data processing and interconnection. A main benefit of edge computing is its low latency. Since each endpoint processes information near the source, it can be easier to process data, respond to requests, and produce detailed analytics.

MediaTek's share price has risen sharply in a short period of time, partly due to increasing attention to the company's role in Google's AI strategy. In two trading days, the share price rose by approximately 19 percent. This brought the Taiwanese chip designer to a new record high on the Taipei stock exchange. The jump in share price follows a period of sustained optimism among investors.

During peak rush hour, it can take two hours to reach New York's JFK Airport from Manhattan. In Sao Paulo, like other major metropolises and multi-city conurbations, traffic has gotten so bad that many look upward rather than downward to get around quickly. Outdated metro networks are also congested. For a long time, rudimentary helicopters have been the only urban air mobility option but there are significant limitations to the now well-worn technology.